CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Laczo, Ferenc Loerinc |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Assimilation and Catastrophe. Hungarian Jewish Intellectual Discourses in the Shadow of Nazism |
| Summary | The dissertation is based on detailed empirical coverage of three publications, the IMIT yearbooks, the journal Libanon and the Ararát yearbooks that provide a representative sample of Hungarian Jewish scholarly and intellectual discourses in the second half of the Horthy era until right before the Hungarian Holocaust of 1944. In the course of the introduction, besides clarifying the subject, aim and scope of the work, a brief overview of modern Hungarian Jewish history is provided and the challenge of writing Hungarian Jewish intellectual history is explained and contextualized. Next to discussing the general characteristics of these three publications and providing overviews of their main contents, the six empirical chapters offer thematic analyses of Hungarian Jewish identity options, the ways internal and external relations were conceived, of alternative models of Jewish culture and assertions of defining values, of political-ideological platforms as well as of various stances on historicity and formulations of historical narratives. These chapters in turn clarify the differences between seven identity options (patriotic, nationalistic as well as five takes on dual identity labeled combined, mixed, primarily Jewish, formally dual and internally conflictual), analyze declarations of five different values as fundamental and fundamentally Jewish (ethics, truth, intellect and culture, life, adaptation and loyalty) and tackle five interpretations of the relevance of historicity stretching from stressing the completely ahistorical to emphasizing the thoroughly historical character of Jewry. Further chapters compare assimilationist - integrationist, interculturalist, particularist, universalist - essentialist and völkisch (népi) models of Jewish culture as well as semiliberal, conservative, corporatist, Zionist and religious revivalist political platforms. The dissertation also explores how authors included in this representative sample of the Jewish Hungarian Jewish scholarly elite interpreted the historical situation in the increasingly desperate years under scrutiny by studying the way historical consciousness worked, how the crisis of Jewry was narrated and what historical analogies were used until the unprecedented nature of the ongoing Judeocide was realized. The dissertation also aims to show the ways in which these discourses transformed in the dramatic years under consideration where the primary focus is on attempts to formulate more inclusive Jewish platforms. |
| Supervisor | Viktor Karády |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/hphlaf01.pdf |
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